Re: [E1000-devel] ixgbe 5.8.1 dropped support for NBase-T in X550

[Fujinaka, T. <tod...@in...>]

The short answer is that we needed to turn it off by default because of interoperability issues with switches that were pre-standards, and you can turn it back on using ethtool.

There were two ways we could fix this: ask the people with the switches to upgrade their switch firmware, or turn off default advertisements for 2.5G and 5G. The customers with the switches objected vehemently to having to touch all their switches, and there were a lot of customers complaining. This is the first time I've heard of anyone asking for 2.5G or 5G outside of the telecom space, so we went with the option of changing the default.

Check the ethtool man page for more information, but there's a bitmask of speeds and modes under ethtool -s that you need to set.

Todd Fujinaka
Software Application Engineer
Data Center Group
Intel Corporation
tod...@in...

-----Original Message-----
From: Philipp Wollermann <phi...@gm...> 
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2020 1:30 PM
To: e10...@li...
Subject: [E1000-devel] ixgbe 5.8.1 dropped support for NBase-T in X550

Hi,

after upgrading from ixgbe 5.7.1 to 5.8.1, my X550-T2 NICs can no longer auto-negotiate a link with 2.5Gb/s or 5GB/s.

I diffed the code and noticed that in src/ixgbe_phy.c the following lines were removed:

case ixgbe_mac_X550:
    hw->phy.speeds_supported |= IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL;
    hw->phy.speeds_supported |= IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL;
    break;

Indeed, when reverting just this change, ixgbe 5.8.1 successfully brings up links with 2.5Gb/s and 5 Gb/s again.

As the change has not been mentioned in the release notes as an intentional feature removal, I wonder if it's an accidental regression?

Kind regards,
Philipp

--
Philipp Wollermann | Software Engineer | ph...@go... Google Germany GmbH | Erika-Mann-Straße 33 | 80636 München

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